Huge
It took balls for Nikki Blonsky to pose for this, I'll give her that.
One of the most recent examples of ‘Fat Acceptance,’ according to MSNBC, is the new ABC Family show Huge, featuring an ensemble cast of overweight actors portraying young adults at a fat camp. Unlike various reality shows where fat people are belittled and shamed into dancing (Dance Your Ass Off) or exercising (The Biggest Loser) or just getting flung off of big balls (Wipeout) for the amusement of a national TV audience, Huge is about people who are happy with their weight and unwilling to let society tell them that they need to change.
The show is being applauded by the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance for showing fat people that they don’t have to be ashamed of themselves or feel pressure to become thin.
And at first, I was all, “Fuck that!” But then I was all, “Wait – maybe not.”
We’re in sort of a weird place with obesity right now in America. The majority of the country is overweight, and the majority of their kids are overweight, and the majority of those people think that they and their children are a healthy weight. Meanwhile, the government and virtually all major medical bodies are warning about the ‘obesity epidemic’ and telling people that they need to start getting thin, while the media is turning girls anorexic by putting makeup on stick bugs and putting them in Gap commercials yet trying to atone for it with movies like Shrek which trumpet the importance of inner beauty over conformism with the help of Cameron Diaz transformed into a fat green farting ogre.*
*Yet Shrek was also the mascot for the government’s youth anti-obesity campaign a few years back…
The message here, I suppose, is to understand that you’re beautiful just the way you are, but also lose 20 pounds lest you put yourself at risk for Type 2 diabetes and heart disease and be too big to fit into your $79 skinny jeans.
I guess at the outset, I want to not like the idea of a show like Huge, because my gut reaction is that obesity shouldn’t be encouraged. It’s a condition generally brought on by excess that creates a lot of health problems and can be avoided by staying active and making healthy eating choices. I mean, if we’re making obesity acceptable now, what’s next? A TV show that glorifies chain smoking and heavy drinking?
Oh, wait.
But then I realize that taking that sort of approach – the ‘being fat is a horrible thing that all overweight people should be ashamed of’ route – is a pretty ignorant way to go through your life, especially when you’re living in a country where a sizable majority of the people you meet are overweight. A lot of my friends are overweight. Hell, next year I’m going to be living with three core members of the Oregon Marching Band’s Beefy Man Club,* all of whom I love very dearly. In fact, when I look back on all the people who have bullied, abused, or otherwise hurt me, they’ve all been slim, trim, compulsive exercisers. My elementary school tormentor went on to become an amateur bodybuilder, an avid long distance runner and weight lifter ran off with one of my first girlfriends, and The Ex Girlfriend, well, enough said.
*Yes, that is a real thing, and yes, it is a proper noun that fully deserves capitalization.
Based on these experiences, one could say that fat people are inherently better than thin people.
Oh, wait.
But then, maybe my reluctance to approve of a show like Huge isn’t rooted in a characteristic dislike of overweight persons, but instead a desire to see these people who are so friendly have no encouragement to maintain an unhealthy lifestyle. I want to do something nice for the people who have been so nice to me, and so maybe I choose to do that by withholding judgment on a TV show about fat people that they may never watch.
But then I’m presuming that I know what’s best for other people, which makes me just as bad as the government with its absurdly high drinking age or its absurdly expensive and unsuccessful War on Drugs. Just because somebody’s lifestyle may take a few years off of their life doesn’t mean they’re unhappy. Maybe they’re living otherwise happy lives save for insecurity about their body image. Maybe any additional shame would drive overweight people to diet pills and the Atkins Diet, both of which are probably more dangerous in the long run than putting mayonnaise on everything.
And in the end, really, why am I getting all butthurt about one TV show anyway? Fat people watching a show about fat people is no more likely to encourage an unhealthy lifestyle than my TV choices are to turn me into a bad magician, or an alcoholic soccer coach, or the commander of a decrepit space warship.* At the end of the day, Huge is one show about fat people that has so far aired a single episode, contending with 112 episodes of a show that starred Calista Flockhart.
*As much as I might want it to.
Hell, maybe it’s a good TV show focusing on unpopular people who don’t have it all figured out. That’s exactly the kind of TV that I love. Maybe I should be watching Huge for its story rather than getting caught up in its message.
Or maybe I’m just overly sympathetic to the cause because I had deep fried cheese curds with my dinner tonight.
Truman Capps thinks that if anybody needs to be ashamed of what they eat, it’s the Scottish.